Earlier this year Sophos launched Central Firewall Reporting (CFR) as our new cloud-based platform to help customers gain deeper insight into activity on their network. Having that knowledge helps them be more efficient, enhance productivity, plan for the future, and protect against attacks. Available at no cost on XG Firewalls running v18 and newer firmware, the free version of CFR enables customers to create historical reports for the past seven days with plenty of customization options. If you’re not familiar with Central Firewall Reporting, watch the CFR Overview SophSkills session to learn everything there is to know about CFR, including the benefits of cloud-based reporting, how to create reports, different customization options, and other important topics.

Introducing CFR Advanced

On May 18, Sophos will launch a new “for pay” version of Central Firewall Reporting. CFR Advanced provides everything the free version of CFR does, plus the ability to extend reporting up to one year and increase the storage capacity for log data generated by the firewall as needed. Over time, the new service will add features such as report scheduling, multi-firewall reports, and more, plus additional built-in report modules, none of which will be available in the free version of CFR. If you’re already familiar with the free version of Central Firewall Reporting, you can get just the CFR Advanced updates in this SophSkills session.

Licensing CFR Advanced

Licensing CFR Advanced is very straight-forward and flexible. It’s on a per-firewall basis, so a license cannot be shared between firewalls. There’s only one SKU to sell and purchase. The SKU is available as a stackable 100GB license. This is the minimum amount that customers must purchase. Each XG Firewall model including hardware, virtual, and cloud, has minimum and maximum storage capacities. The good news is, as long as the firewall hasn’t reached its maximum capacity, customers can add storage whenever they want. Sophos will offer capacity-based pricing in three bands. Pricing is determined by the amount of storage purchased. See the bands below. As an example, three terabytes of storage would fall into the middle band at $55 per 100GB.

0 – 1TB at $119 per 100GB

1+ – 5TB at $55 per 100GB

5TB+ at $50 per 100GB

One other point to make on licensing. CFR Advanced is subscription-based, not perpetual, so customers will need to renew the licenses to maintain their desired storage capacity.

Tools to help you sell CFR Advanced

To help you sell our new Central Firewall Reporting Advanced service, we’ve got some great assets including a new storage estimation tool that enables customers to estimate the amount of storage capacity they need based on the firewall model and data retention period they want.